WHAT - Wolfberg's Helpful Anagramming Tool

WHAT,
Wolfberg's
Helpful
Anagramming
Tool, is really a toolbox of integrated powerful tools,
with many facilities. An extensive list of its features
is available here.

WHAT is a free program for working with words used in
the game of SCRABBLE® and for working with that game and other word games.
It currently runs only on MS/Windows® computers, but we hope to port it
to smart phones and Apple computers.

WHAT was
announced and demonstrated for the first time at the National SCRABBLE
Championship 2004 Tournament, held in New Orleans, LA in early August, 2004.
It has been in use in the Boston-area SCRABBLE clubs since then.
This program was a significant update to Mike's ANA program,
in use for over 12 years. Although the program was originally a sold product,
it has been available for free downloading since January, 2015. Donations
are suggested.

WHAT includes
full support for Spanish
which includes dealing with the
Spanish-only tiles, three of which have double-letters.
For now, the user interface employs English - French and
Spanish languages are in the lexicons only.

As of WHAT Version 2, the popular 15 x 15 Word Game
is supported. The 21 x 21 version of this game is also supported as
of July, 2015. You can set up the board with tiles and find all the
possible plays with a given rack. You can record and playback games, etc.
There has been support for playing the popular 5 x 5 Word Game in English,
and French.
As of January, 2010, there is support in English, French, and Spanish
for playing a Word-Building Game which is based on a game called Wordsmith,
found on some old TIVO DVR sets.

Quick Links

WHAT Availability - Now a Free Program

WHAT
is initially available to run on PC computers running MS/Windows®.
We expect it will work with most versions including W95, W98, NT, W2K, and
XP, Vista, Windows 7, and probably Windows 10.
We believe it will not work with MS/ Windows® Millennium Edition (ME).

WHAT Version 1.0 was first made available for sale
mid-June, 2005. Several updates have been issued since then,
with improvements and repairs to the program.
It was sold for nearly 10 years and has been loved by some avid users.
As of 2015, the program is free, but donations are requested.
One area which had gotten much attention over the years
was transitioning from OWL1 to OWL2 lexicons.
Version 2.2 is the current version of WHAT.
As of October, 2006,
WHAT was approved by the NSA for adjudicating challenges at
official tournaments; its status by NASPA has not been clarified.

Visit the Acquiring WHAT page to
read about getting the program via downloading on the web.

On-line help is lacking and is planned, but there is no current
estimate for when you will begin to see this. Meanwhile, as mentioned above,
you will need to read some amount of introductory material to make sense of
using the program. As time goes on, we hope to adjust some of the user interface
to enable faster learning.

WHAT Forum

Mike's Credentials

Mike Wolfberg is a highly experienced programmer, with several
decades of software development experience. Mike's computer use
began in the early 1960's, when he was an undergraduate student
at M.I.T. After completing his B.S. degree, Mike continued his formal
education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received one of
the early Ph.D.'s in Computer Science. Mike has been an expert
SCRABBLE player since 1980, and he attributes his fast rise to a high
level of play to his use of computers, when they were not so prevalent
for the game.

WHAT is a relatively large program, initially designed,
developed, and documented by Mike in about 1 1/2 years of hard work.
Mike has since supported and extended this program extensively, devoting
much attention to this project for many years, and
he intends to continue with this work into the foreseeable future.